Take a photo of a barcode or cover
I finished this over a heavy weekend of reading and left the review dangling so as not to break the internet with too many book reviews all at once. Then life caught up with me and now it's been two months since I finished it. The lag is no reflection on either how really terrific this novel is or how much I enjoyed and recommend it! This is great stuff--the real drama of those displaced by war turning, ever so slowly, into a deep Kafkaesque meditation on life and our more mundane human desires in a totally absurd universe in which paperwork and the modern nation state, in all of its pseudo-fascist tendencies, utterly betrays our humanity and turns us into "citizens," that is to say documents and statistics to be tallied, controlled, and mostly ignored as inconsequential. The novel is utterly chilling on both counts, both its realistic depiction of war and the absurdist, existentialist fable into which it descends.
I guess I'm a little late to the party, but I've really enjoyed discovering over these last few months Seghers and Christa Wolf, two post-war East German writers I wish I'd read years ago. Seek them out--you won't be sorry you did.
I guess I'm a little late to the party, but I've really enjoyed discovering over these last few months Seghers and Christa Wolf, two post-war East German writers I wish I'd read years ago. Seek them out--you won't be sorry you did.